Context

Robert Stalnaker explores the contexts in which speech takes place, the ways we represent them, and the roles they play in explaining the interpretation and dynamics of speech. His central thesis is the autonomy of pragmatics: the independence of theory about structure and function of discourse from theory about mechanisms serving those functions.

List of contents

• Introduction


• 1: Three Notions of Context


• 2: Common Groung and Keeping Score


• 3: Presupposition Requirements


• 4: Context and Compositionality


• 5: The Essential Contextual


• 6: May, Might, If


• 7: Disagreement and Projection


• 8: Contextualism and the New Relativism


• Appendix


• References

About the author

Robert Stalnaker is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He got his PhD in philosophy at Princeton University, working with Stuart Hampshire and C. G. Hempel. He taught at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Cornell University before moving to MIT in 1988. He is the author of Inquiry (MIT Press, 1984), Our Knowledge of the Internal World (OUP, 2007), and Mere possibilities (Princeton University Press, 2010), as well as two collections of papers, Context and Content (OUP, 1999) and Ways a World Might Be (OUP, 2003). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.

Summary

Robert Stalnaker explores the contexts in which speech takes place, the ways we represent them, and the roles they play in explaining the interpretation and dynamics of speech. His central thesis is the autonomy of pragmatics: the independence of theory about structure and function of discourse from theory about mechanisms serving those functions.

Additional text

A useful book for specialists ... Recommended. Graduate students and above.

Product details

• Authors: Robert Stalnaker, Robert (Massachusetts Institute of Tech Stalnaker, Robert (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Stalnaker, Robert C. Stalnaker
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 24.07.2014
• EAN: 9780199645169
• ISBN: 978-0-19-964516-9
• No. of pages: 258
• Series: Context & Content; Context & Content; Context and Content
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; Philosophy of Language, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, PHILOSOPHY / Language, Philosophy, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics, Sociolinguistics, Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Semantics, discourse analysis, etc